Thursday, August 24, 2006

Hoffman's Note: Author David Assaf tells some yarns of his own: contrary to what he claims, there is no clear evidence that Moshe Schneerson died in a mental hospital after his conversion; and the account of the Seer of Lublin's erection while passed out in a septic tank, was an authentic Hasidic miracle tale retailed all over Eastern Europe.

But those quibbles aside, Assaf offers real insight into the Orthodox Judaic mentality of lying, censorship, violence, personal attacks and extreme exaggeration. Gentiles who have witnessed this behavior in other realms (such as World War II history and the treatment accorded revisionists and anti-Talmudists), will nod their heads in recognition at what is a recurring Orthodox Judaic behavior mode. Unfortunately, at present Assaf's book is only available in Hebrew (and then, just barely, as you'll see). An English edition would wreak havoc with the notion that Orthodox Judaism is a religion of strict moral rectitude, and with the pious books about Hasidic saints written by prevaricators Martin Buber and Elie Wiesel, which have been eagerly taken up by dopey Neo-Con Catholics and goofy Protestant Fundamentalists for whom Orthodox rabbis are the West's "conservative allies" in the "clash of civilizations" and the struggle for "family values."

New Book Reveals Darker Chapters In Hasidic History by Allan Nadler | Forward (New York Zionist newspaper] August 25, 2006

Of all the literary genres to emerge from the 19th-century Haskala, or Hebrew Enlightenment, one of the most popular was anti-Hasidic satire. And the most notorious of these parodies was "Megaleh Temirin" ("Revealer of Secrets," Vienna 1819), a ribald lampoon written by Joseph Perl that recounts a series of desperate, bungled attempts by fanatic Hasidim to seize and suppress a dangerous anti-Hasidic German book that they feared had the potential to inflict great harm on their revered rebbe and their sect.

Now, almost two centuries later, life is imitating satire. The twisted intrigues invented by Perl to highlight the Hasidim's fear of critical inquiry into their closed world is today playing itself out on the ultra-Orthodox street, from Jerusalem and Bnai Berak to New York, Antwerp and Montreal.

This time, however, the fearsome book is neither satire nor polemic, but a serious work of scholarly inquiry by Israel's leading historian of Hasidism. "Neehaz ba-Svakh: Pirkei Mashber u-Mevucha be-Toldot ha-Hasidut" ("Caught in the Thicket: Chapters of Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidism"), written by David Assaf, chair of Tel Aviv University's Jewish history department, appeared in Israel just three months ago, but it has already generated fierce controversy.

BOOK MUST BE SOLD UNDER THE COUNTER

Indeed, although the book, which is in Hebrew, can be ordered from the publisher, it cannot be easily obtained in bookstores. According to reliable sources, who insist on anonymity, several tri-state area dealers of Orthodox books, as well as a few in major Canadian and European cities, are stocking limited copies of Assaf's explosive book "under the counter" — selling them only to their trusted elite clientele, contingent on a strict promise that the transaction remains a secret.

As is so often the case with controversial literature, those who claim to be most offended are usually the ones buying, reading and simultaneously trying to repress the books in question. Indeed, raucous exchanges about Assaf's work have sprouted on a variety of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Internet sites and blogs, in both Hebrew and English.

The interlocutors on these blogs include some distinguished Hasidic scholars and librarians, as well as average readers. The complaints range from the rude ("Assaf's book is like a fart in a cowshed: barely noticed and soon forgotten") to the ridiculous ("Look how low Merkaz Zalman Shazar [Assaf's publisher], named for the President of Israel who was himself a Hasid of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, has fallen").

AD HOMINEM ATTACK

But the most common critique is an ad hominem attack on Assaf's personal integrity and level of religious commitment. "For those people like David Assaf, the things we call Yiddishkayt he has no understanding of because he is not a frummer yid," one commenter wrote on Mentalblog.com. Or, as another more succinct writer, who happens to be a respected Hasidic librarian, put it, "[Assaf] is a vile creature blinded by hate."

So, what's all the fuss about? The purpose of Assaf's book is to revisit and clarify some of the most shocking episodes in the history of Hasidism, events that have been deliberately suppressed or extensively distorted for apologetic purposes by Hasidic historiography. The book consists of seven chapters, each of which examines in great depth some very embarrassing oddities of Hasidic life — some of which have long been known to historians of Hasidism. But Assaf has now clarified them by extricating the kernels of historical truth not only from Hasidic hagiography but also — and this seems to have gone right over the heads of his Orthodox critics — from Hasidism's enlightenment, or enlightened opponents, who often distorted the same events for their own purposes.

LYING TO COVER UP RABBI'S CONVERSION TO CATHOLICISM

The chapter that has created by far the most Internet chatter concerns the conversion to Christianity in 1820 of Rabbi Moshe Schneerson, the youngest son of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, venerated founder of Chabad/Lubavitch. In it, Assaf offers a complete history of the efforts at distortion and repression by Lubavitcher apologists, horrified by the conversion of their founder's son, and by their enlightened opponents, who could not have been more delighted by it.

Let's begin with the Hasidim. Although this tragic episode has not been unknown to historians, neither has it exactly been part of the standard official history of this most high-profile of Hasidic dynasties. In fact, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneerson, in his published chronicle of Chabad history went so far as to deny that the conversion ever took place. According to Schneerson's hagiographical account, Rabbi Moshe was compelled to engage in a theological disputation with the Catholic priest of his town, in which he was of course victorious, and then was forced to flee for his safety.

Rabbi Moshe, according to Schneerson's account, spent the remaining years of his life as a lamed-vovnik — the classic anonymous saint of rabbinic mythology — and was buried anonymously in the Ukrainian shtetl of Radomysl.

As Assaf demonstrates, this fanciful tale has no historical basis whatsoever. Instead, Assaf concludes that Rabbi Moshe's conversion is best explained as a result of the well-documented, though unspecified, mental illness from which he suffered since childhood. And he offers proof. As he explains, while searching the Belorussian State Archives in Minsk, historian Shaul Stampfer recently came across a treasure trove of documents verifying Rabbi Moshe's apostasy — including a letter of intention to convert that was addressed to the Catholic Priest of the Belorussian town of Ula (where Moshe served as rabbi), and his actual baptismal certificate, dated July 4, 1820.

For the skeptical, Assaf includes reproductions of these documents in his book and adds that it is almost certain that shortly after his conversion to Christianity, the rabbi was consigned to St. Petersburg's famed mental hospital, Obuchovskaya, where he died.

FAMED RABBI WHO FALLS INTO SEPTIC TANK WHILE DRUNK

While the story of Rabbi Moshe's apostasy may be the lightning rod for much of the indignation provoked among Chabad apologists, the most vulgar document published by Assaf is quite clearly the tale recounting the "fall" of the famed founder of Polish Hasidism, Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhak Horowitz (1745-1815), popularly known as the khoyze, or seer, of Lublin.

What is known is that sometime during the celebration of Simchat Torah in 1814, the severely inebriated seer fell, or more likely jumped, out the second-story window of his room above the Hasidic shtibl where he held court. Like the affair of Rabbi Moshe's conversion to Christianity, Hasidic hagiography has managed to transform what was either a drunken mishap or a deliberate suicide attempt into a mystical affair signifying a failed attempt to hasten the messiah's arrival.

But Hasidism's critics would have nothing of such fanciful explanations. What really happened, according to a Haskalah rendering of this sad episode in a hitherto unpublished and uncensored version of Sefer Nekiyut U-Ferishut ("The Book of Cleanliness and Abstinence") preserved in Perl's archives — which Assaf has now published for the first time — the seer of Lublin became so drunk that he had to leave his Hasidim so he could "crash" for a while in his upstairs bedroom.

At one point during the night, he got up to urinate — out of the window, of course — and with his "holy scepter in his hand" he fell into the septic pool that lay beneath. Later that night, two Hasidim who went out to "use" the cesspool found their holy master there, holding on to his erect penis — a pre-Cialis phenomenon that they could interpret only as a sign of the seer's prophetic powers. (Or as mockingly described in this version: "They approached him, turned him over and found that his bris had remained faithful to him and steadfast in his hand, and thus proclaimed: 'Aha! Let this be a miraculous sign to the House of Israel. So the word went forth from Lublin that Rabbi Isaac was among the prophets.").

The rabbi never recovered from his injuries and died later that year, not surprisingly on the fast day of the Tisha B'Av. Assaf judiciously rejects both the apologetic, messianic explanation of the Hasidim and the satirical, polemical misuse of the khoyze's drunken fall by the Maskilim.

Instead, he proposes that this was the second suicide attempt by Rabbi Horowitz, who was famously prone to long periods of depression. Based on clearly authentic Hasidic sources, Assaf reveals that many years before his 1814 window jump, the khoyze tried to throw himself off a mountaintop near the town of Lizensk and was saved from certain death only when his hiking companion, Rabbi Zelke of Grodzitsk, grasped his gartel in the nick of time. (Could the midair gartel suspension of the khoyze have inspired bungee-jumping ? Assaf leaves this question to future generations of Hasidic historians.)

Many Americans were shocked earlier this year by the revelations of intense intra-Hasidic violence that accompanied the battle for leadership of Satmar Hasidism between the respective followers of rabbis Aharon and Zalman, after the death of their father, Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum. But next to Assaf's chapter on the violent persecution of Bratzlaver Hasidim of the mid 19th century, perpetrated mainly by rabbis David Twersky of Talne and Yitzhak Twersky of Skver, contemporary Satmar skirmishes appear quite tame.

In addition to their anti-Bratzlav activities, Assaf recounts the general tendency of the Talner and Skverer Hasidim to use intimidation and a variety of violent means, including death threats, rock throwing, home invasions and hostile synagogue takeovers, to "conquer" a string of shtetls in the southern Ukraine in the mid 1860s. The violence got so bad that the tsarist government was finally compelled in 1868 to issue a law prohibiting Hasidic rebbes in the Ukraine from extending their leadership beyond their own towns. But as Assaf documents, the persecution of Bratzlaver Hasidim continued even after the Holocaust, in Jerusalem and Brooklyn in the 1970s and '80s.

The other chapters are profiles of a number of complex and troubled Hasidic rabbis, some of whom ended up leaving the fold. Assaf has also published for the first time a number of explosive manuscripts that have languished, unexamined, in both European and Israeli archives for almost two centuries.

The very last, and most moving, of his seven chapters includes the full text of a shocking letter sent in 1910 by the deeply depressed young rebbe of Shpikov, Yitzhak Nachum Twersky — scion of the most distinguished Ukrainian Hasidic dynasty, which included the rebbes of Tchernobyl, Skver and Talne — to a Warsaw writer, Yaakov Dineson.

On the eve of his marriage to the Belzer rebbe's daughter, whom he had never met, the despondent young Twersky was clearly desperate, if unable, to escape his "tiny and ugly" Hasidic world: "I send you my portrait…as I wanted you to see and comprehend the terrible dissonance and distance between my inner life and my outer world….I despise the people around me, loathing their way of life…I have good taste and love beauty but I am obliged to wear the clothes of the uncivilized: A long silk kapoteh down to my feet, and a shtreimel of tails — that is our badge of shame….And what a terrible thought to think where I am now going. To a 'harem' in the town of Belz….Coerced to marry a woman from there, my gloomy life here with all its black darkness will seem bright by comparison."

RABBINIC CENSORSHIP, REPRESSION AND "RECASTING"

As it turns out, Rabbi Twersky's marriage to the Belzer rebbe's daughter was a happy one, and he not only remained in the hasidic fold but also became a revered rebbe in his own right; however, many of the other Hasidic lives discussed in Assaf's remarkable book proceeded far less blissfully. Assaf is not satisfied with verifying and clarifying the obscure scandals and crises of Hasidic history; equally important are the incredible lengths to which the internal chroniclers of Hasidic history have gone to censor, repress or recast these scandals.

Assaf's book effectively constitutes a double-barreled assault on the apologetic narrative of Hasidic historiography and the exaggerated misuses of these embarrassing episodes by modernizing Jewish historians to discredit Hasidism entirely, both of which have molded the lives of Hasidic rebbes according to false stereotypes. The real importance of Assaf's research is the extent to which it complicates the hitherto regnant accounts of Hasidic history, both the romantic and the polemical.

By examining the inner demons and doubts that tormented a variety of hasidic leaders, torments that evoked a wide spectrum of responses, from conversion and suicide, to alienation and despair, Assaf enriches our understanding of the hasidic world. far from disdaining his subjects, Assaf succeeds finally in humanizing them by cutting through the apologetic mythologies of the hasidim and the polemical mockery of their opponents and demonstrating the natural frailties of even the most pious and revered of men. (End quote) Link

Thursday, August 17, 2006

33 days of bombing Lebanon by Israelis is turned by tax-supported National Public Radio (NPR) on its Aug. 16 afternoon newscast into “the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.” NPR on Aug. 16 also featured Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker for a ten minute uninterrupted Israeli commercial about “anti-semitism” and Arabs who hate “Jews.” Goldberg was completely delusional and he was blaming the victims; as though after 34 days of bombing, any anti-Judaic sentiment by the people of Lebanon would be wholly illegitimate and criminal. Of course there was no reference whatsoever to the anti-Arab racism that motivated a super-power to collectively punish an entire civilian population of Arabs and kill 1,000 of them. Goldberg was supported in his crazy chauvinism by the female NPR interviewer who sounded and acted as if she were Ariel Sharon’s niece, instead of an objective reporter charged with challenging the dogma of her interview subjects. This lengthy NPR segment reminded me of a Nazi broadcast wherein two Hitlerite reporters are decrying anti-German sentiment among the Poles they had just bombed and invaded.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Israeli holocaust against Lebanon compared to "Moses' war against the Midianites"

Rabbi says Israeli warfare will "will bring redemption to the world at large"

Study-and-Warfare Project Seeks Soldiers

by Hillel Fendel

The study-and-sword partnership has gained momentum, but organizers are concerned that many soldiers have not yet signed up for a study partner to pray and study in their merit. Project "Safra VeSayfa" - literally, book and sword, or study and warfare - was formed for the express purpose of linking individual yeshiva students with specific IDF soldiers. The student "adopts" the soldier by studying Torah in his name and praying for his safety. Rabbi Simcha HaCohen Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Rechovot, as well as the Bostoner Rebbe, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Horowitz of Har Nof, Jerusalem, have seconded the call for such partnerships. Rabbi Kook contacted the National Council of Young Israel on this matter, explaining the seriousness and gravity of the situation. He noted the Medrashic teaching that in Moses' war against the Midianites, Moses drafted 1,000 pairs from each tribe. Of each pair, one fought in the war - and one prayed specifically for him. The Torah later teaches that the Israelites did not suffer any losses."By connecting the soldier to Torah study and prayer," says Maayan Ohr of Tekoa, founder of Safra VeSayfa, "the yeshiva student lends strength to the soldier on the battlefield, who then transforms this force into defending and saving our homeland." In addition, she says, "We hope to increase the sense of mutual responsibility, build a deeper connection and encourage a spirit of cooperation within our people. Unifying their strengths will bring redemption to the world at large." For more information on the program, including how it started as a graphics project for a teacher who originally requested "nothing to do with politics or religion," click here. Maayan says that in light of many requests from Jews around the world to pray for soldiers, it is vital to spread word of the program as far and wide as possible so that more soldiers can sign up. She also emphasizes the importance of signing up Jews from all around the world, "as the time differences will allow people to study and pray on the soldiers' behalf even while here in Israel many are sleeping." Soldiers and students who wish to participate are asked to sign up by email, at "safravesayfa@email.com".Link

Monday, August 14, 2006

Twelve hundred years of European anti-Semitism, murder, rape and theft may be laid in large part, at the foot of the Gospel of John. ("He would not go about in the temple, because the Jews sought to kill him," John 7:1. "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires," John 8:44, etc., New Oxford Annotated Bible.)

Now, any and every religion has some portion of its foundation text that is morally and ethically repugnant: Jewish morning prayers, where the man "thanks God that he was not created a woman," or in Deuteronomy 21:18-21, "the rebellious child must be taken outside the camp and stoned to death." The Gospels did not cause anti-Semitism, but they licensed it, to Christian Europe.

(End quote from Mr. Mamet)

Michael Hoffman replies:Mamet is a Hollywood script-writer, director and playwright. He also dabbles in ritual and stage magic and Kabbalah with his factotum, the magician Ricky Jay. In his first paragraph, Mamet offers the familiar indictment of the Gospel of John as "licensing 'anti-Semitism." What this con-artist will not tell his readers is that the Old Testament also contains powerful anti-Jewish pronouncements by Yahweh's Prophets. Is it “anti-semitic”?To gauge Mamet's dishonesty, examine how he deliberately garbles the Morning Prayer of Judaism: "where the man 'thanks God that he was not created a woman." Actually in that prayer the Judaic male thanks the god of the Talmud for not making him "a slave, a gentile or a woman."The deceitful Mamet won't quote that part of the prayer because it might cause his readers to put two-and-two together and come up with the source of Israeli contempt for the lives of non-Judaic Arab civilians: rabbinic law and the prayers of Judaism.Mamet's column in the Baltimore Sun is an ignorant, chauvinist rant that parrots the same shopworn cliches, "The world hates us. We are blameless.” This from a supposedly sophisticated progressive who, in his books and plays, "nobly" exposes the underside of traditional Southern Christian culture. Mamet is an extreme manifestation of Talmudic-tribalism and Ku Klux Judaism who has made it his vocation to self-righteously deflate American Christian tribalism.For our last laugh, dig this line from Mamet: "And much of the liberal West, thrilled to have a victim to worship, nods along." He's criticizing any solidarity with Arab victims of Israeli massacres on the basis that such solidarity constitutes a morbid liberal victim cult. Yet Mamet is a card-carrying member of the biggest victim-worshipping cult of them all: Holocaustianity.

"...In one overnight airstrike (Aug. 12), a convoy of some 500 vehicles carrying civilians and Lebanese security forces, escorted by United Nations peacekeepers and fleeing north from Merj' Uyun with permission negotiated with Israel, was struck near Shtaura in the Bekaa Valley.

"Witnesses and hospital officials said at least six people were killed, including a Lebanese Army officer. The Israeli military said the convoy was fired upon because of a 'suspicion' it might contain Hezbollah fighters. TV images showed wrecked cars, a woman's shoes and other belongings scattered across the road.

" ...Aid convoys from the United Nations and other relief agencies have been unable to get help to the countryside for days. Relief workers say they must phone the Israeli Embassy in Washington to ask for permission for convoys to travel and it is rarely granted.

Friday, August 11, 2006

by Michael A. Hoffman IINote the last item in the column from the front page of this morning's online New York Times: "Arrests bolster GOP as Election Nears." Lebanon is off the front pages of the British newspapers and Republicans are back on top in American politics, all thanks to a mouthpiece media that accepts at face value the conspiracy claims of US and British governments that believe that in wartime truth is so precious it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies. Deception in wartime is a staple of US and British intelligence. This is an axiom about which the US media are unwilling to breathe a word.

Bush and Blair lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they would never lie about a terror "plot" in England? Yeah, right.

Historically, the mission of journalists is to be skeptics and adversaries of Big Brother, probing and investigating government pronouncements, and testing their veracity, but not any more. Now the media is an echo chamber for an "infallible" government. When it comes to pronouncements about "terror attacks," Bush and Blair enjoy the status of the pope.

When Republicans in the US are low in the polls or Israeli war crimes are focusing world-wide horror and revulsion on Zionism, along comes an Al-Qaeda-"linked" terror attack or terror "plot" in time to rehabilitate Bush, Blair and "Israel."

Merely a coincidence?

Moreover, even if this "shampoo" explosives tale were true, why does the West react to it as if we are all innocent little lambs minding our own business in our neck of the woods, rather than allies of Israeli mass murder in far-away Lebanon, where we have no business? Do we imagine that we will assist the Israelis in blowing Arab grandmothers and infants out of their beds and there will be no nasty repercussions?

The Israelis and Americans have taught the Arabs that collective punishment is a legitimate form of warfare. Collective punishment is official Israeli policy. The Israelis have declared that since the people of Lebanon tolerate Hezbollah, they too are rightful targets of bombs, missiles and cluster weapons.

If and when the Arabs turn that logic upon us, and target American and British civilians for tolerating Bush and Blair, suddenly it is a monstrous evil; "Islamic fascism" at its devilish work.

George W. Bush and Tony Blair are deliberately inciting war with the Muslim world by such actions as funding, arming and approving Israeli genocide in Lebanon. The problem with war, aside from its obvious crimes and sins, is that the resulting war fever tends to close the minds of the citizens who are being drummed into lock-step, "patriotic" formation behind "their leaders," so that clear thinking is the first casualty.

The first President Bush helped to rehabilitate war as an instrument of US policy in the first Iraq war. Bill Clinton furthered that rehabilitation in the name of the "good cause" of waging war against "Serbian evil."

Clinton and NATO fought that "evil" so effectively that their bombing killed an estimated 10,000 civilians. Geoge W. Bush has pushed the envelope to where we are now: perpetual war against a dehumanized foe, with all the tools we used vis a vis the far more sinister atheistic Soviet Communists -- diplomacy, trade, negotiation -- cast on to the neo-con's junk heap of history.

But if we sift through that heap we will find that history teaches that war is almost always an instrument for swelling the size of government, curtailing civil liberties, enlarging the police forces and spy apparatus, enriching the military-industrial complex and killing the innocent by the thousands and the millions.

None of this has to happen. America can pull out of the Middle East. Without the American Goliath to back their killings and land thefts, the Zionists would have to make peace with their neighbors and the billions spent on the "war on terror" could go to making the US energy-independent.

To have for President of the United States, a depraved, secret society retard and murderer like George W. Bush can only be a curse on us for our sins: our selfish refusal to have large families, our rampant materialism and our vicious, buccaneer capitalist economic system based on shylock interest rates.

The Republicans are up in the polls? If this is true, and I trust pollsters about as far as I can throw them, it signifies that Americans are up for a Judaic war of annihilation against dehmanized native people; that our children and our grandchildren will still be fighting this war; a war that will see the imposition in the US of identification papers, preventive detention of dissenters, the suspension of the Constitution, the rise of a president-dictator, the enactment of the Talmudic Noahide laws and the death of the liberty for which generations of Americans have fought and died.

Statement of Michael Hoffman on President George W. Bush's declaration of war with a particular religion, "Islamic fascism"

Jesus Christ was not attacked by "Islamic fascists" but by the ideological heirs of today's rabbis. The modern creed of Orthodox Judaism is the same traditional Mishnaic religion as that of the ancient Pharisees who hounded, hunted, stoned and murdered Jesus Christ.

Today, rabbinic fascists are at war with God and all those who love Jesus. One of Judaism's seven "Noahide" laws for non-Judaics prescribes the death penalty for "idol worshippers." Adoration of Jesus Christ constitutes idol worship according to the highest legal authority in Judaism, the Mishneh Torah of Rabbi Moses Maimonides.

Islam is a Christian heresy, the most extreme of all such heresies, but it is still Christian, whereas Judaism is the declared enemy of Jesus Christ and has been since A.D. 33.

Bush is a member of the Judeo-masonic secret society known as Skull and Bones. As such, he is spiritually an appendage of Judaism and he will do the bidding of the rabbis in shedding blood and making war, so that counterfeit "Israel" may continue to plunder land and murder civilians without limit.

In declaring war on the religion of Islam on behalf of racist, murderous Judaism -- the world's most dictatorial, freedom-hating tyranny - Bush has unleashed the darkest demons from Gehanna onto planet earth.

The mad Judas in the White House has made certain that for which Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton laid the groundwork: war without end, and the transformation of America from a Christian Republic into a rabbinic dictatorship that will make Orwell's 1984 look like Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.

May all lovers of freedom continue in the God-ordained struggle against the Chief Priests and their modern heirs, the rabbis of fascist Orthodox Judaism.

To George W. Bush I declare, Caesar had his Brutus and Charles the First his Cromwell, and may you profit from their example.

Once upon a time a dragon was burning cities to its north and committing mass murder on an unimaginable scale. Now this dragon had previously been able to present itself as a lovable curmudgeon, but when the creatures of the western forest saw in their magic mirrors the burned corpses and the cries of the women and children whom the dragon had incinerated, they began to doubt the dragon and question their support for him.

Now the dragon was more subtle of all creatures, and it cast a spell as follows, "British authorities said today that they had thwarted a terrorist plot to blow up multiple airliners traveling between Britain and the United States and cause mass murder on an unimaginable scale."

By the dragon's enchantment the attention of the forest creatures of the west was shifted from the real life victims of his fire, to the imaginary contours of his fairy tale, and thereafter the dragon breathed his fire with renewed vigor and impunity.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The following remarks in defense of Mel Gibson, by the comedian and former rabbi, Jackie Mason, are making the Internet rounds and garnering the kind of unqualified elation that makes me shake my head at the superficial nature of online mentation.

Not that Mr. Mason doesn't make some important points: that Gibson has never done a thing against Judaics or their empire. Quite true.

That Abe Foxman's job requires him to invent racism where there isn't any. Also true. So should we stand up and cheer for Jackie Mason, the fair-minded Judaic?

Well, that's one of the reasons why Mason has been allowed his high profile cheer for Gibson. As the prestige of Judaism plummets in the wake of the Israeli holocaust against Lebanon, the inevitable charm offensive begins. The Cryptocracy wants us to believe that Judaism produces some good and decent people, like Jackie Mason.

The Cryptocracy wants us to continue to believe in Judaism, to some extant at least. Like Joe Sobran, who is cognizant of some of what the Talmud teaches but was moved to praise Rabbi Moses Miamonides anyway, for his supposed monotheistic rectitude.

It wouldn't do for Americans to despise Orthodox Judaism the way they've been taught to despise radical Islam, as wholly and irredeemably evil.

So the Jackie Masons, the Daniel Lapins and the "Torah True" anti-Zionist rabbis are trotted out center stage to keep us believing that Judaism is in some way our elder brother in the faith, with good-hearted folk in its nooks and crannies.

Second point: Judaics respect power, not blogs, chattering classes and pundits, and Mel Gibson wields the power of cinema, with which Judaics have shaped America in their image and likeness since they first managed to steal the medium away from its gentile pioneers, Thomas Edison, D.W. Griffith and Walt Disney.

If Gibson had the nerve, he certainly has the means -- technical, financial and artistic -- to produce a riveting two hour epic film demolishing the homicidal gas chamber hoax. Or he could make a film on the truth about Judaism as a crime syndicate that calls itself a religion. Movies like that could permanently damage--even threaten to scuttle--the entire scaffolding of the hypnosis that sustains the pulsating core of the Cryptocracy.

Mel Gibson has power and the Cryptocracy is not going to allow him to be attacked from every side and driven thereby into the arms of "radical extremists" like Michael A. Hoffman II, Arthur Butz or George Galloway.

So, while the berserk Zionists are allowed to pummel him and make him eat crow, another wing of the Cryptocracy is there to shield him, soothe him and keep him in the fold. Enter Jackie Mason.

Mason is a Judaic of Judaics but he says Gibson has never harmed the Judaics in all of his career. That career includes the movie "The Passion," which has been mistaken for some enormous blow to Judaism. Celebrity and star-power are wondrous things. "The Passion" is actually a hate-the-Romans flick. "The Passion" has the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary played by a homely Khazaress, while Satan is played by a beautiful Aryan type.

"The Passion" has Christ say "Father forgive them" as the camera pans to show the Chief Priest of the Pharisees. Jackie Mason, a Judaic of Judaics, can find nothing offensive in "The Passion." Others rabbis have concurred.

Mel Gibson has never done a thing against Judaism. Mason is telling a truth Christians and especially traditional Catholics, have denied and blocked from their consciousness.

Jackie Mason makes much of the virtue of decency. He calls Gibson decent because Mason says Gibson never harmed Judaics. Aw shucks, that's sweet of Jackie to say that. It gives us all a warm fuzzy feeling, the we're-all-in-this-together vibe that Judaic Hollywood has been promoting since it first took over as storyteller to the nation.

The problem is that Mason has not followed his own advice and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a decent fellow himself.

Rabbi Meir Kahane was the founder of the misnamed Jewish Defense League or JDL, which bombed its way across America and was listed as a terrorist organization by the FBI. In the Israeli state, JDL member Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 40 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994.

Rabbi Kahane advocated the forced expulsion of all Arabs, Christian or Muslim, from Palestine. Who backed Kahane and his blood-dripping terror gang? None other than our avuncular quondam rabbi and awarder of certificates of human decency, Jackie Mason, who now, thanks to his favored position in the Establishment media, is placed in the role of arbiter of Hollywood deceny.

Sure, it's enjoyable to hear the truth about Abe Foxman and the ADL, and about parasitic tinsel town losers who resent a success like Gibson, and how alcoholic intoxication is a Jekyll and Hyde phenomenon rather than an accurate reading of the content of one's soul.

But my job is to raise my readers above the level of puppets and robots, and I ask you to react to Mason's remarks about Gibson beyond those prescribed, degraded parameters.

Jackie Mason is not decent, he's not one of us and he's not speaking out for Mel out of the goodness of his heart.

Like Rabbi Lapin and the Talmud-True anti-Zionist rabbis of Neturei Karta, Mr. Mason is trying to salvage for Judaism a measure of its prestige, to snooker us into continuing to buy the discredited notion that Judaics are part of western civilization, rather than aliens utterly hostile to it and forever seeking its overthrow by one means or another.

The boobs in our ranks will uncritically applaud Mason, because they have no memory. They forget the innocent victims of the JDL, Mason's favored terror gang (known in Israeli territory as "Kach").

Still, I admit that Jackie has retailed one valuable, suppressed truth about Mel Gibson: he has never in his life done a thing to harm Judaism or its leadership.

Mason: I'll be honest with you. It's not that I'm so forgiving, it's that all these people are very sick. They get a vicious, sick, perverted, sadistic thrill out of this whole thing. Look at the glee in them. Look at the happiness about catching him. Because they're all basically failures or they never amounted to anything. Oh, they're actors who are struggling to make a living and they've always been bitter and envious of a guy who makes such a huge success. So now they found an excuse…

Cavuto (interrupts): But he did say a lot of nasty things. As a Jew, how do you feel about it?

Mason: Let me be very honest with you. Nobody could excuse these remarks, but do you ever take it so seriously when a guy is drunk and stupid, laying on the floor, and he says some ridiculous things. People curse their own mother in a state like that. They tell their whole family to drop dead. I mean, the whole family would be going to a cemetery by Thursday.

Cavuto: But never the less, they say it's a truth serum. You don't buy that?

Mason: They say it's a truth serum. You gotta be a moron, you gotta be the phoniest, wretchedest fraud in the world to claim that it's a truth serum. If it's your family or your friends and they say something in a drunken state, you say he's drunk and you forget about it. In a drunken state you might bang your head against the wall. Does that mean you wanna break your head? You might go into a car…

Cavuto: (interrupts) You're not bitter toward Mel?

Mason: I wanna ask you a question. Do you ever notice how people beg a guy not to drive when he's drunk and he drives anyway cause he doesn't even know he's drunk and he doesn't even know he shouldn't be driving and he doesn't even know that ten seconds later he's dead?

Cavuto: That's a very good point.

Mason: If you wanna kill yourself, does that prove yourself that really if you gave him a gun he would kill himself? If you gave him a gun I don't think he'd kill himself. He's too sick and drunk to know that he's about to kill himself. I wanna ask you a question. These people are attacking him. They're all saying the same thing in Hollywood, "I would never work with him again." These are all failures that have never worked with him before. He never asked them to work with him, he don't need them. He makes a fortune, but they can't get a job. But they're threatening him that they won't work with him again.

Cavuto: So you think a lot of this is jealousy?

Mason: Jealousy and hate and contempt for a guy who's doing too good. Also with this guy Abe Foxman, this head of the ADL. Another fake from top to bottom. I don't talk about people, it's not my nature, but he's a total fake. Let's be honest about it. Anybody who makes a life out of fighting racism in effect has to blow-up racism in order to justify himself and the job he has, otherwise he'd have to go to work. Otherwise he'd have to get up in the morning and get a real job.

Cavuto: Jackie, let's look at this. ABC has already cut plans to co-produce his holocaust special, so that's out. Is he going to have any ill effects from all of this in Hollywood?

Mason: He might have ill effects, because people love burying a guy who's big. If a guy on a bicycle breaks down, you cry for him. If he breaks down in a Rolls Royce, you applaud. People who make a living from fighting ant-Semitism, like Al Sharpton, and from fighting racism, they have to convince themselves there's racism everyplace and that every minute they're about to blow up every Jew in America, because otherwise they'd have to go to work for a living. He fears a job a lot more than he fears Anti-Semitism. That he might have to get up in the morning is an amazing fear that Foxman has. And all of the sudden he made himself the judge and the jury of this man.

Cavuto: Well, a lot of people have. There was that Rabbi who suggested that maybe Mel Gibson should apologize to his congregation on Yom Kippur.

Jackie: You know why? Because nobody knows who this Rabbi is. Who cares who he is? All of the sudden he becomes a producer. All of the sudden he's producing a show with him and Mel Gibson. He'll become the star of the show. Then you'll see it in the newspapers, "Starring Rabbi Schwartz with Mel Gibson". He'll get second billing, because it's another Rabbi looking for attention. They decided they're the judge and jury of this whole situation. They've become a personal mafia now. Because who knows who they are, who would pay attention to them? Foxman and this other guy are loving it. They're threatening him everyday about how he should apologize…

Cavuto: Jews who are speaking out against… There are some Jews who aren't in that camp who are legitimately offended. You say they should get over themselves?

Jackie: They're nuts if they're offended. His life has been a mecca of decency all of his life. He never afflicted a Jew in his life personally. How a guy lived for fifty years is what should count, not one remark when you're drunk. He never joined a club that was anti-Semitic. He never refused to give a guy a tip at a restaurant because he found out he was Jewish. His house doesn't have a sign in front of it that says 'no Jews allowed'. What did he ever do that was anti-Jewish in his life? A whole 50 years of decency doesn't count because you made one remark? Now they say apologize, but he didn't apologize enough. He should apologize a little higher. He should apologize in the morning, he only apologized at night. …. He was apologized but he was sitting… He should have got a note to apologize… He should apologize at least two more times, four times, thirty-two… now they want him to get circumcized

Cavuto: Enough already… It's a family show…

Jackie: It's a family show, but we should have decency. It's more important if we brought decency into this world and stop attacking people because you're never amounted to anything…

LOS ANGELES - A foundation created by filmmaker Steven Spielberg will donate $1 million to relief efforts in Israel as it battles with Hezbollah. The Righteous Persons Foundation will make an initial contribution of $250,000 to the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles Israel Crisis Fund. The foundation will then follow up with gifts to the New Israel Fund and other organizations that are providing relief to those evacuated from northern Israel, said Marvin Levy, foundation spokesman. The Jewish Foundation will use its donation to support emergency efforts for evacuated children, install shatterproof glass in Haifa's three hospitals and provide emergency assistance at the Nahariya hospital, he said. The New Israel Fund will use its donation to set up crisis hot lines and provide food and other emergency supplies to families in northern Israel, Levy said.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

In an article ostensibly oozing sympathy for civilians in Lebanon, we caught the NY Times lowering the death toll for Sunday's Israeli massacre in Qana, to 29 (see the last sentence in the screenshot above, taken from the Times's website on the evening of Aug. 2 PDT).Authorities in Lebanon have said that the death toll in Qana was at least 57-60, with dozens of children killed. But the newspaper of record is doing damage control for the Israeli killers by arbitrarily lowering the number of their victims. How is the NY Times able, on Aug. 2, a mere three days after the bombing in Qana, to arrive at a total number of deaths at Qana at 29? The Times does not say "an estimated" 29. It fixes the figure at 29 without qualification or reference to its revisionist source. In other words, this is "history" by New York Times fiat. This is the zionist mentality.Has the Times sent a forensics team to Qana?

I think not. I think we are seeing the maufacture of history, holocaust-denial, and tampering with the documentary record, before our very eyes.Something similar happened twelve years ago, in the wake of Baruch Goldstein's massacre at the mosque in Hebron on Purim, 1994. The 40 Palestinians he killed magically became 29 in the US media, and that phony figure has been the official death toll in Goldstein's massacre ever since."...the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Red Cross said they had confirmed 57 deaths in the attack and they stood by their figures....'It's confirmed that there are 57 bodies,' said Elias Diab, an official in the Lebanese Red Cross operations room in Beirut. 'Twenty-seven of them are children." Chicago Tribune, Aug. 3, 2006.The Israeli invasion of Lebanon "has killed more than 900 people and wounded 3,000, with a third of the casualties children under 12, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said in a video message to the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia." [Reuters, Aug. 3. 8:33 a.m. EDT].

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Qana is believed to be the site of the Miracle of Cana. 2006 years ago Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding, in the very same place that the Israelis turned 37 children into corpses on Sunday.

"Four out of five Lebanese Christians support Hezbollah in the current conflict, according to a poll conducted last week by the independent Beirut Center for Research and Information." (Jefferson Morley, Washington Post, Aug. 1, 2006).__________

Behind Condi Rice's cult-like smile, lurks a crazed neo-con fanatic immersed in apocalyptic fantasies. It remains to be seen just how many Lebanese mothers will lose their babies while she entertains her demonic hallucinations...Not to be outdone, the demented war criminal who pollutes the corridors of the White House has vetoed UN cease-fire resolutions and derailed an Italian effort to end the hostilities in Lebanon. To assure the success of his war-mongering obstructionist policies, Bush dispatched Paul Wolfowitz to the gathering in Rome. Just to rub it in, the architect of the Iraqi war was all smiles as he pressed a handshake on the visibly distraught Lebanese Prime Minister.As Karl Rove will tell you, the path to victory in November depends on rallying the Armageddon-worshipping, end of time Protestants who drool every time a Palestinian or Lebanese family is blown to smithereens. In their estimate, every crisis in the Middle East brings us one step closer to the rupture. Pray for the end of times and pass the ammunition. Given their dismal poll numbers, Bush and the Republicans can hardly afford to alienate Israel’s amen corner at the New York Times. Neither can the Democrats afford to lose the affections of militant Likudnik operatives at CNN and FOX. Until the polls close in November, both parties will be competing to determine who can best lick the boots of Ehud Olmert.In America, Israel is a domestic affair. The ethnic Zionist lobby gets what it wants or sets off brigades of media hyenas to eat the raw flesh of any politician who displays squeamishness about wasting Arab lives. Witness the ‘anti-war’ Howard Dean accusing anyone opposing Israeli war crimes of ‘anti-semitism.’ He can’t have forgotten that he lost his White House bid when he called for a more ‘even-handed’ foreign policy in the Middle East. As chairman of the Democrat leadership, he seems to be applying the valuable lesson learned on his ill-fated campaign – don’t mess with the Israeli lobby ninety days before a mid-term election.Some Arab-Americans still entertain silly notions about changing the minds of their congressmen by explaining the other side of the story. Fat chance. One hundred Senators gave unequivocal support to Israel. Under normal circumstances, you can’t line up that many Senators to support their own children. True enough, you can always find the occasional Senator willing to express concern about war crimes committed by US marines. But when it comes to Israel, they all studiously avert their eyes from the deliberate targeting of civilians and the systematic destruction of vital infrastructure.The Israelis can nuke the entire Middle East and still have the audacity to bill the American government for the cost of the operation. Any dissenting Senator can and will be taken to the shed for re-education sessions – but not before getting a campaign crippling lashing from Israel’s spiritual brethren who toil in the mass media monopolies.Every member of our parliament of whores has innocent Palestinian and Lebanese blood on their hands. By giving their unconditional blessings to the mayhem in Lebanon, the Senate was just making the obvious point that no Arab child is safe while the U.S. Congress is in session.Of the many actors responsible for this blood bath, the Israelis are perhaps the easiest to understand. They never had a need for fig leaves to begin with. As far as Tel Aviv is concerned, this is just an exercise in low intensity warfare. The Israelis simply do whatever they can get away with. Without ever bothering to charge them, Israel can hold thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians prisoner. But if the other side decides to detain a few soldiers, Lebanon and Gaza can be incinerated. In exercising the ‘right to defend itself’, Israel reserves the privilege to indiscriminately carpet bomb South Lebanon with guided missiles and cluster bombs. And America gets to replenish Israel’s arsenal.The newest Israeli rule is that all the fighting, killing, abductions and mass destruction can only take place in designated ‘Arab’ areas. The Israeli army can murder, maim and terrorize anyone on the other side of the Green Line or the Blue Line. In fact, they can cross any red line they want and commit any war crime that satiates their appetite for brutalizing their subjects. And to engrave that rule in stone, Tel Aviv has secured a permanent American license to use collective punishment measures up to and extending to starvation and the systematic destruction of vital infrastructure. Any resistance to Israeli unilateral measures is considered the work of terrorists. Any questions?As for the United Nations and ‘Coffin’ Annan, they have become nothing more than an annex of the State Department. Following in the footsteps of his son, Annan is not the kind of man to refuse a lucrative offer – like killing the investigation of how his first born looted Iraqi oil revenues. He has presided over the gutting of the world organization to the point where the UN is now merely another tool of convenience in the arsenal of the Bush administration. To their credit, some European nations – notably France and Italy – have used their limited influence to bring the hostilities in Lebanon to an end. But, the Bush administration had no problem circumventing these efforts. For an American politician, Israel is more important than the entire continent of Europe. Moving on to Egypt - a country that no longer matters. Does it really make a difference that 99% of Egyptians are against the war in Iraq and the fire bombing of South Lebanon? The Egyptian government granted a tacit endorsement of Israeli aggression against Lebanon. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are seen as extensions of the Muslim Brotherhood – the only real domestic opposition to the Mubarak regime. As they say in this corner of the planet, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.As always, the real Arab elephant in the room is the House of El Saud and its allies in the surrounding oil sheikdoms. Why exactly did the influential Gulf monarchs decide to cast their lot with Tel Aviv? Here we are at peak oil. Petro dollars are flowing by the tens of billions into Gulf coffers. And Saudi Arabia drops its last fig leaf and demonstrates to one and all that it has struck an alliance of convenience with Israel and given the Israeli war machine a green light to ravage Arabs in Lebanon and Gaza.On the face of it, it doesn’t make much sense. The one Arab country that has the leverage to shelter the region from American-financed Israeli mass murder decides to publicly turn on its own people. And King Abdallah has announced that he will pick up the bill for some of the damage inflicted by the Israeli bombings. Israelis bomb. Saudis pay. Such a deal. Unfortunately, for all their wealth, the Saudis have yet to perfect a way to bring back the dead or reattach missing Lebanese limbs. For the Saudis, the Lebanese and Palestinians are ‘throw away’ people. All this nonsense about Arab solidarity is merely a circus act to shore up the legitimacy of the kleptocrats in the Gulf.We may never know the precise nature of the secret Saudi agreements with the United States and Israel. In this case, the Saudis probably signed on to fight a proxy war with Iran – which is seen as the sponsor of Hezbollah. The Saudis are experts at proxy wars – having supported and financed Saddam’s war against Iran – a conflict that lasted eight long years and cost a million lives on both sides. They participated with gusto in the systematic decimation of the secular Arab national movement. It’s no secret that the Saudi monarchy was elated at the outcome of the six-day war – hoping it would bring down Nasser’s regime. And the Kingdom’s role in the first and second Gulf war is a matter of public record.Still, it’s worth taking a guess as to why the oil monarchies went public with their support for Israel’s plan to bomb Lebanon into rubble. Perhaps the Bush administration promised to dampen the influence of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. Can it be a mere coincidence that Washington is suddenly increasing its troop levels in Baghdad and taking on Moqtada Sadr’s militias? Did the Saudis strike a bargain to increase Israeli influence in Lebanon in exchange for a decrease of Iranian influence in Iraq?Any proxy war against the government in Tehran always finds ready support on the Arab side of the Gulf. As administration insiders have already hinted, ‘the new Middle East’ will revolve around Saudi leadership of the Arab camp with a supporting cast that includes Egypt and Jordan. It’s doesn’t seem to matter that the Saudi regime is not exactly a brilliant model of democratic evolution in the region.It matters not that Israeli guns are now battering the two most democratic governments in the Arab Middle East – the popularly-elected leaders of Lebanon and the Palestinian authority. All Bush's talk of democracy is nothing but a marketing campaign for domestic American consumption. The Arab intellectuals taken in by this neo-con ruse need to start taking commonsense supplements on a regular basis.To harness this moment of clarity, it is essential to understand that America’s invasion of Iraq needs to be divorced from the Likudnik fantasies of reshuffling the Levant to suit Israel’s expansionist whims. At the end of the day, America’s military entanglements in the Gulf are a service performed for the richest families in the history of the world. Far from supporting democracy, the grunts in Iraq are there as a mercenary expedition to protect the absolute monarchs who act as custodians of the oil plantations. When it comes to wagging the tail of the American dog, Saudi Arabia and the Israelis get equal opportunity access.Saudi Arabia and their Gulf allies are major partners in American-Israeli ventures. Most astute observers know that King Abdallah can permanently end all foreign military adventures in the region without firing a single shot. Every last American soldier would be home for Christmas if the oil sheikdoms stopped taking dollars in exchange for their oil.No oil cut off is required. If the Arabs just stopped accepting American currency – the dramatic effect on world economies would lead to major realignments that neutralized American influence in the region. The economic rationale for the American Empire would dissipate into thin air. Washington would pressure Israel to implement resolution 242 in the same manner that it is squeezing Lebanon to implement resolution 1559.Of course, King Abdallah and his ruling clan are fully aware of this. While they feign impotence, they retain immense leverage over developments in the region. It’s not about their lack of ability to influence events in Lebanon. Rather, it is because the Saudis have other priorities – like smuggling oil revenues denominated in petro-dollars to American and European capital markets.The business of the House of Saud is money laundering on an epic scale.The business of America is currency exporting. Together, the Saudis and Americans impose the dollar as an international currency that accounts for eighty per cent of all international transactions. This allows the United States the luxury of running huge trade deficits by obliging other countries to maintain huge reserves of the only currency the Saudis accept in exchange for their black gold – the American dollar.The Saudi support for the devastating Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Gaza is nothing more than a political transaction to maintain their lucrative money-laundering franchise. Lebanese and Palestinian civilians need to understand that this is not personal. It’s just the way the Saudis do business.For years, Saudi sponsored media outlets have propagated an image of a benevolent regime that defends the faithful against foreign crusaders. Most recently, the Saudis regime took a high profile role in confronting the insolent Danish publication that insulted the prophet. They went so far as to recall their ambassador. But here we are – a few short months later – and the Saudis are making nice with the American-financed Israeli campaign to dismantle Lebanon and enforce the “Condi/Weisglass” accord – the secret agreement that will allow Olmert’s government to annex half of the West Bank.The key to Arab salvation is in passive resistance to American-Israeli designs on the region. Unfortunately, that key is locked away in the House of Saud. All Arab intellectuals need to harness their efforts to open a public debate to help explain why the Saudis are feigning impotence while Lebanon and Gaza are being mercilessly torched.To effect a full disclosure of Saudi rationales for supporting the invasion of Iraq and Lebanon, we need to understand and propagate the nature of the American imperial project in the Gulf and the full extent of the Saudi money-laundering racket. Once the average citizen in the Middle East and the US understands that this is a war to protect the almighty dollar – we can call on people of good will around the world to dump that blood soaked currency. The onus will then fall on the House of Saud to explain why they will not participate in a straightforward dollar boycott to defend their ‘Arab brothers.’Of course, Arab intellectuals can always revert to their old habits of taking inventory of how many innocent women and children are being slaughtered. They can continue to document the vicious destruction of infrastructure and make a fuss about collective punishment and American double standards. There will still be those Arab-Americans who will continue to bang their heads on the wall and waste endless efforts in letter-writing campaigns to convince a single senator that Palestinians and Lebanese are part of the human race.Forget all that. George Bush doesn’t care about Arabs – unless they have deep Saudi pockets. It’s a waste of time to appeal to non-existent American compassion. And it’s a pipe dream to expect a sudden moral awakening among the policy makers in Washington. You can parcel post a dismembered Lebanese or Palestinian child to the homes of every Senator in Washington and still be met with a blank stare. One of the qualifications for career advancement at the State Department is to demonstrate complete indifference to the death and mutilation of innocent Arabs. That’s just the way America is, and Arabs – especially Arab-Americans – should stop deluding themselves about what makes Washington tick.So, what to do now that all the fig leaves have fallen? Gather them and burn them with the dollar.Link